Fujitsu unit streamlines lead gen with new tool, vendor

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Objective: Late last year, Mark Lewis, director of marketing at Fujitsu Imaging Products Group in Sunnyvale, Calif., assessed his team’s lead-generation practices and found them disorganized and inefficient.

Salespersons across the country acquired contacts independently at various events and entered these leads into a central database. Following this initial effort, however, there was limited cohesion to the lead nurturing process.

“Sales would maybe send one follow-up e-mail, but there was no consistent message … and no way to track if people received the e-mail or responded,” Lewis said.

Lewis and his team realized they needed to align marketing and sales initiatives to, as he put it, “better generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and increase revenue.”

Strategy: With few resources to dedicate to such an endeavor, Fujitsu IPG sought a marketing automation vendor, one with a solution that could easily be integrated with the company’s existing customer resource management (CRM) application.

After a four-month search, the company chose eTrigue Corp. late last year. Unlike many of its competitors, eTrigue offers a flat fee structure that allows for predictable, month-by-month budgeting.

According to its Web site, eTrigue helps users “create, execute and track e-mail, landing pages and online activities.” In the case of Fujitsu IPG, the vendor also facilitated communication between the marketing and sales teams.

“[ETrigue] allowed us to take the burden off individuals and to say, ‘Hey, sales guys: Let the marketing team handle it. We’ll get a consistent message out,’ ” Lewis said. ETrigue also provided the necessary tools for measurement and analysis of results.

Results: Although its partnership with eTrigue is still in its infancy, Fujitsu IPG has already seen marked improvement in its lead generation and nurturing programs.

After installing the eTrigue software, Fujitsu discovered that up to 50% of its e-mail messages were bouncing due to invalid addresses. In addition, because the software does not require staff to operate, Fujitsu can devote more of its budget to marketing projects.

“[ETrigue] is going to allow us to take our CRM system and lead generation to the next level,” Lewis said.